A Progressive Worker's Perspective on the
political and cultural events of our time.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

The Tortured Logic of Media Propaganda

Here in Tidewater, our local paper reaches new lows in the tortured logic of embedded propaganda as it glorifies the destruction of Falluja and says it gives our Marines a reason to keep fighting in Iraq. I have sent the follwing letter in response.

To the Editor

In the most blatant and twisted example of propaganda I have yetseen, your article on Marines practicing urban warfare in ourneighborhoods states, "For Marines, the Fallujah battle has come tosymbolize a reason to keep waging the Iraqi war."

A "battle" implies a struggle between roughly equivalent forces. Thedestruction of Fallujah was a massacre in which many thousands ofcivilians, children and the elderly were purposely murdered. Our useof banned phosphorus weapons melted people. The destruction of thatcity was a brutal and vengeful act of unspeakable horror that willlive in infamy and of which we should be ashamed.

A majority of our soldiers in Iraq say they want to get out of thereas soon as possible and many have spoken out against the needlesshorror of a war based on lies. For your paper to assert that ourdestruction of Fallujah, our most brutal atrocity to date, is areason to keep waging the Iraqi war is more than tortured logic. Itis criminal.

I have no desire to see Marines practicing their tactics in myneighborhood and many I've heard from feel the same way. What wewant is to see them home and not on the front lines of Bush'scriminal aggression.